This week me and my classmates learned Bachata 101. Wow. I don't think I'm old enough to watch that let alone do it with a stranger. To start, we were taught the basic rhythm and steps. Like salsa it has 8 counts, and you step on 1,2,3, 5,6,7. But unlike salsa where beats 4 and 8 are typically for resting, in the Bachata they are used for hip thrusting. And so we had to learn how to properly hip thrust. This is significantly more challenging that it may sound, and it was hilarious watching the guys try to pull it off. Well it was hilarious until I tried doing it myself. It really is hard. Because you aren't just doing some weird pelvic hump thrust. You have to thrust your hips in a particular direction in a particular way or it won't look right. And you have to get your whole body into it as well. The idea is that you thrust in the opposite direction you just moved. So if you were sliding to the right on 1, 2, 3. Then you have to thrust to the left. But then you're also supposed to start walking to the left on 5, 6, 7. That for me is really hard for some reason. It's like trying to rub my belly and pat my head. I get tongue tied except it's my legs. I think the problem for me is that you have to take two steps with the same leg. It's like if you are walking and after taking a step with your right leg you go ahead and take another step with your right leg. Because your brain is wired to go left right left, it may be much harder than it sounds to go left right left right right left right left left right . . .
After we got some good practice in just walking around and thrusting our hips, it became time to add partners. No A-frames here. It was chest to chest and your legs have to scissor each other. See in salsa you're supposed to lead with your arms, but in bachata you are supposed to lead with your body. So you have to stand really close together so that the girl can feel your frame. The problem is if she's a pretty girl she may end up feeling more than my frame!! Haha, that was gross.
But in reality that was not an area of concern for me. Trying to keep the beat, complete the steps, figure out the thrust, and think of any turns I want to do keeps my mind more than occupied enough. It is a lot of fun though, and it's nice to be learning a different style. Although, I still haven't gotten the salsa style down yet.
On an unrelated note, that isn't long enough to warrant a full post so I'm writing it here, last night it rained. And sometime between 4 and 5 I was awoken. I was having my usual pleasant James Bond-esque dreams, saving the girl and shooting the bad guys when I started vibrating. My apartment was shaking and there was a massive boom. Actually it was BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Four of them, in sequence but without pause. I have no idea what it was. One guy at work said it may have been a transformer exploding. All I know is that it was very very loud. I thought this must be the second coming, and fell back to sleep happy. I figured if this really was the end of the it all, then at least I was behaving myself. I didn't think Jesus was going to fault me for sleeping at 4 in the morning.
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